Here is a new interview with Caitriona Balfe from Vanity Fair

From Vanity Fair:

When Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series came to TV last year it was heavily praised for its innovative depiction of on-screen sex. Yes, the relationship between Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) is another romance between two very attractive people, but there was an earned intimacy and somewhat unusual emphasis on the female gaze that put it a cut above the gratuitous-feeling sex you might see on other shows. But still, with its time-traveling, swashbuckling adventure, and recurring tropes of the bodice-ripping genre (Gabaldon’s books are sometimes shelved in the Romance section), Outlander could still be dismissed as sexual fantasy. That is, until this week’s episode, “La Dame Blanche,” which featured a sexual reunion between our two leads and grappled realistically, in two different cases, with the impact of sexual assault.

Heughan’s character Jamie was sexually assaulted at the end of last season, and the spectre of both his abuse and his abuser (Tobias Menzies’s perfectly villainous Jack Randall) hung like a shadow over the past three episodes. “You haven’t seen the sex up to now,” Balfe said in an interview, in reference to Season 2’s sexual drought, “because they’ve been struggling with their intimacy, because Jamie’s struggling with the trauma from the attacks of Black Jack.” It’s extremely rare for any show, let along one with dashing virile heroes, to explore how the male psyche grapples with sexual assault.

More after the jump!

–

The Frasers took so long to give into their simmering chemistry last year that any Outlanderfan had to feel the frustration of another separation, but thanks to the surprising news that Randall is still alive, Jamie makes a breakthrough. The prospect of having his revenge on his abuser—presumably the 18th century version of therapy—allows Jamie to re-connect with his pregnant wife in a searing-yet-sweet sexual encounter. And to ground the moment in reality, Claire’s swollen stomach is the center of attention.

“Sam and I, we kind of fought to keep the belly,” Balfe says. “I think originally they were just a little bit like, ‘Maybe nobody wants to see that.’ But—especially because their intimacy has been so disrupted—it was so important to us to show that this is their safe place. Diana had written me the most beautiful email about pregnancy. She was so honest and so articulately beautiful about the process. The good things and the bad things. We talked about how sexual pregnant women feel and how that can be such a strong feeling, and to relegate that and to not use it I thought would have been a real disservice to the journey of this couple.”

Read the rest of the article here!